The following article was written
by Lois Barris and printed in the August 1999 newsletter.

CCGS and Sandra Sopak Receive Recognition From NGS

Norwood and I were privileged to attend the annual conference of the
National Genealogical Society held this year in Richmond, VA from May
12 through 15 [1999]. Other CCGS members who attended were Diana Bums,
Sallie Gregg, Roland Littlewood, Beverly Przybylski, Mary Wolfe, Karen
Livsey and David Bolling. We were very impressed with the wide range of
genealogical workshops and the excellent quality of all the meetings and
vendor's exhibits. But, the highlight of our week in Richmond came on
Wednesday morning, May 12, [1999] at the opening session. At this time
several awards of merit were presented to individuals and societies for
outstanding contribution to the world of genealogy.

NGS has recently instituted a series of regional conferences, the first
held this spring in the Chicago area. A few societies were given special
awards for their help in arrangements for that regional conference. But
only one award was given to a society based on merit, and that award was
presented to the Chautauqua County Genealogical Society. There were probably
more than three thousand people seated in the auditorium when the Chairman
of the Awards Committee, Lynn McMillion asked if Norwood and/or Lois Barris,
representing the Chautauqua County Genealogical Society were present.
Wow! This was such a great feeling to stand up and walk to the podium
to greet Mrs Shirley Langdon Wilcox, President of NGS. As Mrs. Wilcox
handed us the award certificate, Mrs McMillion read the following citation:

"The NGS Award of Merit is presented to the Chautauqua County
Genealogical Society for their efforts to preserve and publish the county's
unique and little known records. The list of publications to their credit
is long and they continue an ambitious publications program. Their willingness
to undertake these projects serves the greater genealogical community.
Over the years, their publications committee has extracted and indexed
county records, town records, newspapers, cemetery inscriptions and county
school district records."

The
story of this award dates back to August of 1998 when a large contingent
of CCGS members Paul and Virginia Barden, Donna Johnson, Dick Sheil, Donna
Mills, Norwood & I attended the Federation of Genealogical Societies
(FGS) annual conference in Cincinnati OH. We had a vendor's exhibit at
Cincinnati with a display of our publications and other good works. In
that huge exhibit hall, our local society was like a little fish swimming
in mid ocean, but a director of NGS, Sandra Hewlett, noticed our display
and returned several times during the conference to talk to our members
and ask questions. She picked up several copies of our publications flyer
and any and all other literature we had on display. In the ensuing months
CCGS received an order from Ms Hewlett for several of our books and there
also began a series of several phone calls from Ms Hewlett to our members
as she gathered specific information about our past and our on going projects.

In the progress of these phone conversations, we mentioned (probably more
than once) the important role of the County Clerk, Sandra Sopak, in some
of our recent projects. One of these was the extraction of information
from the Chautauqua County section of the New York State Census for 1865.
This project was expedited by the loan of the microfilmed census records
from the County Clerk's office. The landmark project was made possible
with the cooperation of the County Clerk is our on going work on nineteenth
century tax records. The NGS awards committee was so impressed by this
cooperative effort that they determined to give a special award to Mrs
Sopak. She in turn was so honored to receive notice of this award that
she and her husband traveled to Richmond to attend the presentation and
accept the award.

The citation read at this presentation was:

"Sandra Sopak, Chautauqua County Clerk, receives the NGS Award
of Merit for her willingness to cooperate with the Chautauqua County Genealogical
Society in order to make records more available to the public. Her latest
efforts include arranging to have photocopies made of all county tax lists
which date from 1850 and before, so the Society's publications committee
can extract, index, and ultimately publish this valuable historical information.
The Society in turn, donated a set of their genealogical indexes to aid
the county clerk when she is asked for vital record information. This
is a fine example of record keepers and record seekers working together
for the benefit of both."

Sopak is the first county clerk in the country to receive such an award
and was in fact the first non member or non genealogist to be presented
the Award of Merit. The NGS Awards Committee reported that response to
this award was so positive, the organization will annually recognize others
for similar outstanding accomplishments.

The reference to genealogical indexes referred to in the citation to
Mrs Sopak was specifically our twenty volume set of Indexes to the Dunkirk
Observer, donated to her office in return for the photocopies of tax records.
We are very proud of these awards and of our joint efforts with the Chautauqua
County Clerk and others at the County Court House. We should also mention
that Ms Hewlett, though she has no family connection to Chautauqua County,
purchased our books with her personal funds in order to show our work
to the national committee. She told us at the conference that she later
donated these books to the New England Historic Genealogical Society in
Boston.